Road to TV success not Rocky for Carroll

LOS ANGELES - Rocky Carroll easily pinpoints the moment he knew it would be an actor's life for him.

He was just out of college and had landed a job in New York with producer Joseph Papp, something a bit less prestigious than one of Papp's famed Central Park gigs.

"We worked on three Shakespeare plays each morning at an old Broadway theater for the New York public school system," Carroll recalled.

"That was our audience, five days a week. Sometimes the kids were receptive, sometimes it was just a big recess to them.

"After a year of doing that, grueling as it was, I said to myself, 'If I can go through this and still be excited, this must really be what I want to do for a living.' "

Lucky for him, and lucky for audiences. Carroll, who gained a 1990 Tony nomination for August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson," is currently stealing scenes as a pompous anchorman on CBS' "Welcome to New York" (7:30 p.m. EST Wednesdays).

Carroll's Adrian Spencer is Ted Baxter with a twist, as self-absorbed as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" newsman but smarter and more cunning.

Carroll and co-star Christine Baranski, playing a demanding producer, deliver crisply executed performances that are among the season's great delights.

The writing is a match for their skills. In the first episode, Spencer sizes up the station's new weatherman, a naive Midwesterner played by Jim Gaffigan, and is distressed to see they're wearing similar eyeglasses.

"Why do you wear YOURS?" demands the anchorman, his own specs intended solely to make him look more intellectual.

"To see," replies Gaffigan.

For the handsome, genial Carroll, however, substance clearly takes precedence over style.

Settled comfortably into a couch in his publicist's office, the actor is wearing an outfit that would provoke a Spencer sneer - the closest thing to designer wear Carroll has on is a "Cleveland Golf" sports cap.

3After working in films ("Crimson Tide," "The Great White Hype") and on television ("Roc"), Carroll was ready for a sitcom of his own. He did a pilot for CBS. It wasn't picked up, but the network offered him the part of Dr. Keith Wilkes on "Chicago Hope" in 1996.

When the series ended last season and Carroll started thinking about another job, CBS Television President Leslie Moonves again demonstrated confidence in him with an offer to join "Welcome to New York."

"The writing was very smart and something I hadn't done before. When I started thinking of Christine being the quarterback, as it were, of this team, I said this is something I could have a lot of fun with because I would be surrounded by people who are wonderful."

Carroll, who valued his experience on the groundbreaking black sitcom "Roc," was pleased to find a worthy follow-up among so many dubious offerings.

When faced with demands for more positive minority roles, television's response has been to take a stereotype and "just give him a better title," Carroll said. "OK, he's still an idiot, but now he's an attorney. He's still an idiot, but now he's the head of the radio station.

"I don't think a lot of people were fooled by that," he said.

Adrian Spencer, said Carroll, is not the brunt of every joke: "This guy really has a position and plays from strength and not from weakness. It was very important to me."

Taking the role in "Welcome to New York" meant saying a temporary goodbye to Los Angeles and his wife of four years, architect Gabrielle Bullock. She's an associate principal in a Los Angeles firm and, it so happens, a New York native.

They are "kind of figuring it out as we go along," Carroll said.

"She knew me when it was eight weeks of some play in Chicago and then back to the unemployment office until the next show came around. She truly understands this business."

Carroll, a Cincinnati native, was steered by an observant teacher into a city performing arts high school. He says paying dues made him the actor he is.

"When young people ask, 'What's the best way to get here?' I tell them, 'You're not going to want to hear the way I came. You work, you work your tail off and expect nothing for it in return.'

"I never followed some guy at a party and tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'How do I get to meet your agent?' Those words never passed my lips."